Aftermath of The Pirate Bay Trial: Peter Sunde's Plea – In His Own Words

Some probably see Sweden as a country where proper due process of law prevails, or at least exists. Others would very much like to see Sweden as such a country. One thing that this country has shown is, that when the interests of its establishment are threatened, all the branches of government fuse into one and cut any corners needed to neutralize the threat to its establishment, rules and rights be damned.

On April 17, 2009, a verdict was handed down that led the world to blank stares of disbelief, then furious anger. The two operators of The Pirate Bay, its media spokesperson, and a fourth unrelated person were sentenced to one year in jail each and damages that, by now, well exceed 10 million euros. This was essentially a declaration of war against an entire generation. The case was appealed and lost, and the Supreme Court denied to hear the case, to everybody’s surprise except the establishment’s.

A few days ago, Peter “Brokep” Sunde – the former media spokesperson of The Pirate Bay – sent a formal plea for pardon to the Swedish Administration. This is a procedure where you can get a judicial sentencing undone by the political administration in exceptional circumstances, as part of checks and balances between the branches of government. It is practically never granted, but Peter saw it as a way to get his version into permanent governmental records – and to get a written and signed statement that no error had been committed in these circumstances. As Peter wrote in Swedish: this was not written with the intention to take it into HTML format, but any claims and facts in the text can easily be verified in Swedish-language media by any reporter wanting to do so. I have taken the liberty to insert a few references – some for reference, some for the Swedish context.

This is a long text, but worth reading. It was only as I translated it from Swedish, forcing me to really contemplate its meaning in detail, as the full egregiousness of it all hit me.

Peter’s Plea

I’d like to tell a story from my life, a story that has come to have great importance – not just to me, but to the global and emerging Internet. I happened to get a role in the eye of the storm. For your consideration of the submitted plea, I feel that this letter is needed: an insight into what has gone wrong, and why you need to fix this. You see, indirectly, I do not ask pardon for myself. I ask pardon for a judicial system that has been steamrolled over by lobbyism and ignorance. But ultimately, I ask pardon for our future culture and communications. My case has significant impact on these.

This is a long story, so let’s get started right away.

A little over six years ago, something odd happened in Swedish history. The Police conducted a raid at twelve locations in Sweden. 65 police stormed in at these locations and searched for something and anything that could be used as evidence against a search engine on the Internet.

Nothing like this had ever happened before in Sweden, and will quite likely never happen again. The days that followed produced tens of thousands of articles around the whole world. Thousands of people, mostly young adults, took to the streets all over the nation and protested. They protested that their cultural life had been violated.

I attended one of these protests, having a political interest and being the media spokesperson for the search engine in question. A search engine helping people all over the world to get in touch with each other to exchange information. A search engine so appreciated, that almost every day, a mail arrived from somebody telling the story of how it changed their life. Pictures of tattoos with its logo proudly inked onto someone’s body. Acclaims to the Swedish web service that changed people’s lives. The protests boiled down to just this: people felt steamrolled over, all across the world. I remember standing in the Mynttorget square on an early morning in the beginning of June, 2006, watching representatives from all parties in Parliament screaming out their fury over what had recently been uncovered: the United States had threatened little Sweden with trade sanctions if the web service wasn’t shut down[1].

The Swedish Public Television’s newscast Rapport had told the embarrassing story. Mighty Hollywood demanded that the White House would force Sweden to do something about the cultural exchange going on outside of Hollywood’s control. The Swedish Minister of Justice at the time, Thomas Bodström, was called into a meeting in the White House and was informed of the consequences of non-compliance: trade sanctions from the United States against Sweden within the context of the WTO. Sweden could become a second Cuba.

A few months prior, a Swedish prosecutor had arrived at the conclusion that this service could not be sentenced for any crime in Sweden. He sent a memo explaining this to his superiors. After a meeting between representatives from the Justice Department and Sven-Erik Alhem, the over-prosecutor at the time, the prosecutor in question reconsiders. A quick raid was required, with full force. So full a force, in fact, that when the raid is actually conducted, the police have no idea what to grab. They seize hundreds of computers, in several cities, but also loudspeakers, cables, and the like. They don’t know the size of the things they’re supposed to be looking for, and decide – during the raid in session – to rent trucks from local gas stations to ship off all the seized goods. In short, it is stressful, unplanned, and ill considered. So ill considered that the police even missed several locations where the target of the raid had ongoing activities.

Thomas Bodström promised to come clear with what had happened. And yet, over 700 mails between him and the United States regarding this matter were (and remain) classified as secrets of the State. We still haven’t seen them. In the aftermath of the political scandal that was uncovered, Swedish national records were set in charges filed with the Constitutional Committee (Konstitutionsutskottet), Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO) and Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern). The newly-founded Swedish Pirate Party became one of Sweden’s largest in a matter of days. A few weeks later, an election was held. None of the young wanted to vote for the ruling Social Democrats any longer, knowing that the Social Democrats had sold out their interests to rich lobby organizations in the United States. The Social Democrats lost power, partly because of this scandal.

Only two days after the raid, The Pirate Bay was back online. It’s an easy service to copy, and with no advanced functionality. That was one of the major features with the underlying technology, being smart and easily maintained to that level. It was so easy to maintain, nobody had practically touched it for a year at the time of the raid.

The attention around The Pirate Bay only grew after this. It might have been a large service before, but it was suddenly one of the world’s 100 largest services. Global media called non-stop.

My involvement in The Pirate Bay had been one, and one only: media spokesperson. Suddenly, images of my face were being printed onto front pages of all the world’s newspapers. I was invited daily to television and radio to discuss the political issues surrounding file sharing. Debates raged for days on end, and I hardly found any time to do my day job, thinking this was such an important issue. I grew more and more active in the political aspect of the topic after the raid, and indirectly, I became a representative of those who say that file sharing is something positive for society as a whole.

The raid was harsh and forceful. As mentioned earlier, it took place at twelve locations in Sweden. Myself, I lived in Oslo, Norway during this time, seeing myself as very peripheral in this context. My acquaintances from The Pirate Bay had been informed of charges pressed against them, but nothing more happened for a very long time. After about two and a half years, I got a letter. At this time, I had moved to Sweden, and I was being called as a witness, being called to give my deposition to the Police in a few weeks’ time.

About 30 people were called as witnesses. Some were known to me, some I’d never heard of. Time passed and I was supposed to go to the police station to give a deposition. Just the day before, the lead interrogator Jim Keyzer (who was also responsible for the entire investigation) calls me and tells me I’ll be charged with a crime on arrival. He tells me that this being the case, I have the right to have an attorney present. He doesn’t stop there, but also gives me the tip of picking “just about the first lawyer you can find, as we’re in a hurry to get this over with”. He adds that I should “skip picking a hotshot lawyer from Stockholm” so his work wouldn’t be further delayed. All of a sudden, the investigation is in a world of rush to get concluded.

Now, I’m a reasonably intelligent person. Obviously, I see that something is odd when a policeman asks me to pick a bad lawyer. Therefore, I immediately called the first good lawyer I knew, Peter Althin[2]. Althin took the case immediately, and called the policeman in question. The policeman got upset and enraged as he had already planned his trip to the city of Malmö, where I would be heard, and found it enraging that he had to schedule a second trip to the city.

A few weeks later, Jim Keyzer came to Malmö to question me. My lawyer was with me, and both he and I felt that something was very odd. My lawyer told me that in his long career with many high-profile cases, he had never seen such a rude and stressed-out interrogator. He found it very odd indeed. Myself, I thought it felt like a scene from a bad movie, when Keyzer screamed at me that I was being childish in responding “no comment” (as I didn’t want to say anything that might affect my friends). In a few locations in the transcription of the recorded hearing, the transcription just reads “unhearable”. That’s when Keyzer is outraged and yelling so loudly that the microphone is unable to record the sound.

It may appear odd that I’m placing such emphasis on Keyzer here, but there’s a point to it. It’s the handling of this case. Sweden has a reputation of being a country with high morals, sans corruption and with common sense guiding its justice. In my case, this has been shoved aside. Jim Keyzer is one of many examples of this.

One week after the filing of the concluded investigation, one of my acquaintances noticed that Jim Keyzer had changed his “network” on Facebook. He was no longer part of “Police Authority in Stockholm”, but was now part of the “Warner Brothers” network. Warner Brothers is one of the corporations behind the charges against The Pirate Bay. I got very upset and called Jim Keyzer to ask him what was going on, and was informed that he had changed jobs and was working for Warner now; Warner and NBC Universal, another corporation behind the charges (not to mention the political pressure). Warner and Universal are also part in the Anti-Pirate Bureau (Antipiratbyrån), an organization which was one of the formal plaintiffs during the trial. Keyzer’s new role was anti-pirate manager for these organizations. He had started his new job the day before the investigation was formally concluded.

Jim Keyzer’s first assignment for his new employer was to locate a co-defendant, Gottfrid Svartholm. Gottfrid is a nomadic young man who frequently lives with friends. Since Keyzer had been able to use police resources to get information on Gottfrid’s whereabouts, he went to that location to serve the civil lawsuit part of the criminal case that he, himself, had investigated for upwards of three years. Keyzer did run into Gottfrid by chance, and did not disclose his change of employers.

Using my rather far-reaching network, I looked closer into at what time, exactly, that Keyzer signed on with his new employer. It turned out that his new employer had posted the job opening publicly, and in a few meetings about the ongoing investigation, Keyzer had been informed that he may be a good fit for the new position. After some more digging, I located a person who had applied for the same job. He could tell me the exact date when he was informed that the position had been filled by another applicant: eight days before I was upgraded from “witness” to “defendant” in the case. And seven days before Keyzer started calling and telling me what a rush it was to hear all witnesses. Accordingly, the only time I met with a policeman during the entire time of the investigation was with the very policeman who had already got a well-paying job with my adversary in the case. A policeman going from almost no speed at all, to having to close the investigation in one day. In a hearing that my lawyer perceived as one of the oddest in his long career.

At the time of that hearing, I was also the most hated person in the power corridors of Hollywood. I was the one individual most important to silence, being the media spokesperson for their nemesis. Young people all over the world listened to me as I told them of the fantastic opportunity we have for a free and open, participatory culture, as long as we don’t have to be locked up by these corporations. I spoke with all kinds of people – from teachers and students, to presidents of some of the world’s largest countries – about the opportunities and the threats on the table. The threats were mostly the adversaries in my case.

As the case came up in a Swedish District Court, it was assigned to a normal department by random, as is proper. However, the manager of Department 5 (the department of IPR) didn’t think this was a criminal case, but an IPR case. Therefore, the case was moved to Department 5, at the request of the department who wanted the case. It would later turn out that, as lots were being drawn to allocate a judge to the case at random, there was only one to choose from: Tomas Norström, the head of Department 5, who had requested the case would go to his department. In short, a Swedish judge decided that he, himself, should be trying a specific case, by abusing the processes of the District Court.

Tomas Norström is very interested in copyright cases. So interested, in fact, that he also happened to be a member in the Swedish Association for Copyright, and was a board member of the Swedish Association For Industrial Legal Protection, SFIR[3]. Two organizations that take a very clear stance on copyright issues. The associations are daughter associations of ALAI and AIPPI, two international organizations whose statutes state their goal to strengthen the interests of copyright holders. The chairpeople for these international organizations frequently make statements condemning all kinds of copyright violations, and work for harsher punishment for violations.

Tomas Norström didn’t consider himself to be biased. Besides, he neglected to disclose his engagements since he regarded them as without consequence to the case. There was plenty of opportunity for him to consider his bias before the trial, as I personally had checked the layman judges[4] and found that two of them were biased. When my lawyer officially communicated this, Norström published a press release where he said he had found one biased layman judge (without mentioning the complaint from us). He had found a composer who had been active in the record labels that were suing us. There was another layman judge who got the paycheck from these industries, who Norström did not consider biased.

The proceedings in the District Court were very strange. There was commotion just everywhere: TV crews from BBC, al-Jazeera, Swedish Public TV, Norwegian Public TV, and more. For several days, it was like the whole world was watching when Sweden were prosecuting a few people for aiding and abetting a crime with no principal perpetrator. Everywhere, people shook their heads. In the large newspapers, there were polls whether people thought there should be a conviction – 99.8% out of over 50,000 said “no” (and there was a margin of error of 0.2%, according to the statisticians of the paper, so possibly 100%).

During the court proceedings, I noticed sleeping laymen judges. We were held to sit watching screen captures, screendumps that immediately showed to my technical mindset that files had not been downloaded via The Pirate Bay at all. As we pointed out that the screendumps used as evidence proved conclusively that The Pirate Bay had not been available when they tried to download something, the prosecutor changed the formal charge to another title, resembling “aiding and abetting an assist of a theoretically possible crime”. None of the thusly-guessed principal crimes could even be traced to being under Swedish jurisdiction – or Norwegian, for that matter, where I had been living during the events I was on trial for. Still, we were convicted.

We were convicted to a collective sentence. Everybody was sentenced to one year in prison and 30 million SEK in damages, record-setting damages in Sweden. It surfaced that the court had been biased, but despite that, it was declared that Norström had made no formal error of proceedings. Instead, we had to appeal to the Appeals Court.

Looking at the verdict from the District Court, I couldn’t really understand why I had been convicted. There were no specific charges against me. There were no periods of time where I had been involved. There was not even a crime proven to have been committed – and yet, I was convicted of aiding and abetting a crime that had not been proven to have taken place. Because of substandard evidence, the burden had been turned around – I knew things that could have been useful for The Pirate Bay, and therefore, the reasoning went, these things had happened and I had performed them. Despite the fact that all people who had been heard stated that everything programmed or developed on The Pirate Bay had happened before the events for which I were on trial, and that the skills I possessed that might had been useful, was still dwarfed by the two founders of The Pirate Bay. Skills that, in the end, weren’t even needed as everything had been untouched.

In the Appeals Court, the story was similar. It wasn’t one judge with a background in the Swedish Association for Copyright, but two. There were laymen judges that worked for Spotify – a competitor of The Pirate Bay – which was also owned in large part by the record labels which were our adversary. After a painfully long playback of the recorded testimonies from the District Court (where even the laymen judges in the Appeals Court fell asleep a couple of times), we were still convicted. I was personally convicted to eight months in prison and 46 million SEK in damages. This sum, having collected interest, is closer to 100 million SEK today (11 million euros).

As I read the Appeal Court’s verdict of why I should be personally responsible, I cannot feel anything but apathy and helplessness. According to the Appeals Court, I have done three things that give me criminal liablility. I’d like to go through these with you.

Among other things, I’m supposed to have installed a computer that operated as a so-called load balancer – a computer that makes it possible to distribute the workload of big web services among different computers. It reads clear as day in the Appeals Court verdict that I’m responsible for configuring this computer. Such a computer did indeed exist in one of the racks that The Pirate Bay was located in. On the other hand, it wasn’t connected with a single wire or cable in any way. Some computers have been investigated at the National Forensic Laboratory (Statens Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium). Some computers have been combed for details. In some cases, the prosecutor has called owners of computers to ask them if they want to press charges of electronic trespassing against Gottfrid Svartholm, as they found that he has had access to computers. Computers he has been maintaining for clients. The computer I’m supposed to have been responsible for isn’t mentioned with a single line of text, except in the seizing protocol from the raid. I cannot find the configuration I’ve been convicted of creating. The configuration I have created, beyond reasonable doubt, according to the Swedish Appeals Court. The configuration I can say with 100% certainty would have proven that this computer had never been used for The Pirate Bay. The owner had placed it in the rack by themselves just a few weeks prior to the raid.

During the Appeals Court proceedings, prosecutor Håkan Roswall confirmed my story of this, that this machine had never been used in the operations of The Pirate Bay. Therefore, my lawyer put no energy into bringing it up in his final statement. And yet, Roswall said after this, that I had been responsible for it. And in the end, I was convicted because of it. There is not a shred of evidence anywhere that this computer has been in use, not for anything at all. I usually say that I feel like a Finn convicted of a gun murder, because there was a knife nearby, and “us Finns are known for using knives”. Since I “confessed” to knowing what a load balancer is, I was convicted for such a computer having been at the site, despite not being operational. And despite my co-defendants are being among the foremost in the world of building such solutions, working with it daily. And despite the fact it would have been dead easy for Jim Keyzer to bring out the configuration, especially when I am about to be accused for it.

Point two I was convicted for is that I’m supposed to have built a system for genres on The Pirate Bay. I’m supposed to have been responsible for improving functionality of the service by somehow injecting genres. Whatever this would mean. In the verdict, it says I was responsible for “categorization”. When something is uploaded to The Pirate Bay, the uploader chooses themselves what category they want to put the material in. After that, it’s there. The category system has existed since before the events on trial – I’d even dare say it’s been the same system since The Pirate Bay started. Besides, genres is something completely different than categories, it’s sub-categories. One category might be Movies, Music, or Games. A genre might be Action, Sport, or Hiphop. There’s a significant difference in meaning. But in short, there hasn’t been a change of categories on The Pirate Bay since 2004. There hasn’t even been a change to the categories on The Pirate Bay today. And genres have never even existed, and yet, I have been convicted for creating them. The reason for my conviction that I mentioned “genres on the bay” in passing in a mail, a third person asked who’s responsible for search, and was replied “I think Peter”. At the same time, I was involved in building a new service, The Video Bay, a service for streaming video which would have gone online if it hadn’t been for the big raid. Despite this, the Swedish Court thinks that I’m guilty to categorization on The Pirate Bay, proven so beyond reasonable doubt. Technical evidence doesn’t exist here, either. This would have been dead easy to produce, too, and this was also a task in Jim Keyzer’s area of responsibility.

Point three is an action I admitted to performing. But I don’t consider it being a crime. I’m convicted of having sent an invoice for advertising on The Pirate Bay once in April 2006 (almost a year after the events on trial started). The back story was as simple as a quarrel between those who paid for advertising and the company managing the advertising on The Pirate Bay, and therefore, the former demanded to be invoiced from a Swedish company. As I was well-liked by all parties, the CEO of this Swedish (publicly traded) company asked me to send the invoice from my Swedish company. I did, and then I paid an invoice from the company that they themselves refused to pay directly. There were personal quarrels behind it all, and it was a way to come to an end of this quarrel. I didn’t make a cent from it and the money wasn’t even in my account for a full day.

This is something that an ordinary collections agency could have done, without getting prosecuted or convicted for it. Jim Keyzer has heard the people selling the advertising, who collected half of the money made on The Pirate Bay, and didn’t once think of accusing them of making money off of financing this service. The prosecutor was of the exact same mindset. But push coming to shove, I am completely sure there is nothing illegal in what I did.

In the eagerness to make sure The Pirate Bay was convicted, I was pulled along, evidence or no evidence. Reading the verdict, it is obvious that the starting point has been that I must be convicted, and then trying to find something to convict me of. The fact that the policeman who worked for my adversary in my case (as well as my political adversary) has been able to investigate all computers in detail, and chosen to not investigate those concerning my conviction, leads me to the obvious viewpoint that I wasn’t given a fair chance. It’s a farce that there are biased judges able to pick and choose whom to convict. These people in the Swedish judicial system have been wielding the power that the public has entrusted in them, and them have done it in a manner that I hope they feel shame for the rest of their lives. They are textbook corrupt and criminal.

Instead, I would like to end my long letter with my reflections on it all. I know that I’m at a point where my chance of escaping punishment is less than one-tenth of one percent. Not having to go to jail for crimes I didn’t commit. Crimes that weren’t even committed in the first place. Crimes that surely aren’t even crimes to begin with, if they had been committed, and if they had been committed, hadn’t been so by me. It’s a bizarre situation with my distance to any real criminal liability. Still, I must spend a couple of months locked up in a Class 2 facility[5] since there is said to be a risk that I would repeat these crimes, crimes that haven’t been committed, almost seven years ago. Crimes that, if they are to be committed, require access to high-speed net connectivity, physical machines, server halls and the like. Crimes that don’t need to be committed, since that kind of technology isn’t used any longer. And once I’m out of jail, where I’m certainly going to become increasingly bitter over the situation, I have a debt of 100 million SEK (11 million euros). Money in fantasy numbers, supposed to “compensate” for aiding and abetting the assistance of a theoretically possible crime I’m supposed to have done by doing things that didn’t happen. An economic debt to some of the world’s richest corporations. A debt that practically means I don’t have a future in Sweden as a country, if I want to live off of anything other than breadcrumbs or the goodwill of my friends. This debt is equivalent to exile, to deportation. I will need to become an economic refugee from Sweden.

This bizarre situation is one that authorities in Sweden close their eyes to. It is an insult to everything the judicial system is supposed to represent. It is a shame for the entire population. A population that doesn’t even share the opinions behind the laws I’m convicted of breaking. And it’s these things that I ask that all of us be pardoned from. The lost faith in the justice system with all the bias, all the obvious corruption, the unconstitutional orders across branches of government (ministerstyre) that were never investigated, all the ugly tactics that have been used to satisfy a trading partner high on its own power. Sweden’s judicial system has sold out individuals. That is not supposed to happen in a democracy.

Grant the people of Sweden pardon from this corruption.

[1] The threat from the United States of trade sanctions has since been well documented.[2] Peter Althin is considered one of Sweden’s best defense lawyers.[3] The association has since changed its name to The Swedish Association for Protection of Intellectual Property, sfir.se.[4] Swedish district and appeals courts have a mix of law-schooled judges and random layman judges. It is supposed to create a system of checks and balances similar to the United States’ jury system. In the district court, there is but one law-schooled judge in a case.[5] A Class 2 facility is a medium-security prison.

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

Discussion

S

July 6, 2012

How about making a tutorial on how to make a TPB competitor?
1. boot computer from USB live-linux key with persistence
2. run script (setup nginx with disk-persistence of caching, a database, a handful of php pages?)
3. share the new site with your friends

By showing how simple it is, more doubt would (if possible!) be cast on the spectrial. And it would be a technical nice feat. In fact, why not start already? http://piratepad.net/make-your-own-TPB

John Random

July 13, 2012

Swedish people should start a campaign to get justice for Peter Sunde. It is abhorrent that such corruption is allowed to take place unchallenged. People need to much and put up a resistance to corrupt judges and officials.

Anonymous

December 14, 2012

You’re a fucking idiot.

dwarduk

July 15, 2012

Problem is having the bandwidth to provide the service. Even just providing where the data is would be too much for many puny connections to handle. Like mine. Rural internet sucks

Freudian slip: “copmuters” in “Some copmuters have been combed for details.” I rather like it.

mychoice

July 15, 2012

haha, nice catch

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 16, 2012

i hope you die u sick capitalist fuck

Lolman

January 2, 2013

I hope you suck Stalin’s dick until your mouth explodes.

Appear

July 19, 2012

It’s even better when you realise what the word ‘muta’ means in Swedish.

Colin

July 6, 2012

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to translate Peter’s letter Rick. It makes fascinating, if chilling, reading.
No Wonder Julian Assange sought refuge in the Equadorean Embassy in London rather than be extradited to Sweden.

Way back in the 1960s, I spent a year working in Sweden. The social democracy it was then is totally unrecognisable today. But at least the internet still allows us to spread the word about injustice, whether in Tunisia or Sweden or the big bad USA.

Okay, not being able to speak or understand swedish, I have to rely on third-party translations and reporting, and while I trust you, and like and respekt Peter, so much about this just sounds so outrageous and strange that it’s indeed hard to believe. Working for the courts myself, I know that everyone in a legal case has a different story to tell, and that convicts are notoriously innocent (sorry for sounding sarcastic here). And it’s strange, I both want and don’t want to believe that this is how it happened. I do believe in the legality of the Pirate Bay, and the innocence of their proprietors, but at the same time I don’t want to believe that the swedish legal system (and indeed the swedish democratic system along with it) is broken to an extent that allows innocents to be tried as scapegoats over international trade disputes.

I guess I’ve got two questions here: How much of Peter’s side of the story is actually the truth (as in: the truth that independent investigation would report about the case), and how is it possible to help Peter, and do something about this?

Jonas

July 6, 2012

At least the part with the police working for the movie companies checks out completely. It’s hard to help him right now though, the case has been rejected by the highest court in Sweden and the next highest sentenced them to prison and incomprehensibly large fines.

Jakob

July 6, 2012

Thanks for a good summary, Vanish, comprised in this sentence:

… “the swedish legal system (and indeed the swedish democratic system along with it) is broken to an extent that allows innocents to be tried as scapegoats over international trade disputes.”

Well put. Many of us in Sweden know for a fact that this is what justice in Sweden has become.

Facts are everywhere. Names of some lawyers and politicians resurface time and again in high profile cases where innocents are sentenced to jail in the crossfire of incompetence and megalomania.

It’s difficult to tell whether Swedish politicians that are part of the game have so far realized the damage done.

As a Swede, I have experienced that Sweden has become an international laughing stock due to the obvious failures referred to above. Failures where nobody in Sweden come out as a winner, but some failed Swedish politicians and lawyers feel that they are let in from the cold. Perhaps it’s time for them to consider why they really start to feel warmer …

Oldtimer

July 8, 2012

I am a swedish citizen and I can assure you that the swedish legal system is indeed that broken. Peter’s story is really the truth of how the system works in this country these days. If you annoy someone in power, laws don’t matter. You will get struck down.

I’m not sure if it was better when I was young, but it seems to me that this erosion of true democracy and freedom has accelerated. I’ve taught my own children that the legal system is corrupt, the police are the enemy and laws are essentially toilet paper. None of their friends seems to disagree when them either.

Swedes are generally naive and trust officials to do the right thing, but I think that will change very rapidly soon. And when it does, it’s going to get bloody.

tiger97a

July 12, 2012

its the same way here in the usa as we are fighting a ex senator of the state of GA as he owns the water company that furnishes the water to the area where we live and he has the local leaders in his pockets as we asked for a well permit and was told we would have to use him but checking into that we found our it was a lie but to make it short if you piss them off here they go after you to but i am lucky enough to have the means to fight back and we have some friends in higher places also so this has gotten quite funny, but as we all know now Sweden is no longer neutral as it has been bought by the movie and music company’s just like our own leaders are bought and paid for and admitted to on national TV, so it’s everywhere. sad isn’t it.

WhatHappened2Democracy

July 16, 2012

That may have looked like a paragraph, but, WOW…longest sentence EVER.

Correction

August 29, 2012

At least there are two commas! They were near the end so I was very blue in the face by the time I reached them. Good story though, I agree, Eff Georgia.

cinderellomx

July 19, 2012

After reading your post i had a flashback. A flashback that took me to Mexico (the place i was born). 5 years ago i would have put almost the same comment, unfortunately even the most well-built countries, democracies (give it a name) have sold their dignity to the US and its corporation, and that’s a fact. Corruption is a world-wide virus, that has spread with such as speed, that it amazes me.
It’s sad to say but Human life is not important anymore and that’s fact, is just that some countries are less hypocrites about it than others.

appear

July 19, 2012

All of Peter’s story is the truth. He has no reason to lie, Rick has no reason to spread lies, and those who have followed the case (and are familiar with the language) know it to be true.

Legion

October 27, 2012

” Working for the courts myself”

Get well.

Enlightend

February 12, 2013

Watch the in court footage of the trial, you’ll see what a clusterfuck of nontruths and uninformed bullshit it was.

If Peters conviction hinged and later stood on him installing and configuring a loadbalancer, that wasn’t even ever used, then I wonder what conviction might hang over my head.

I’ve been part in installing entire datacenters with thousands upon thousands of servers and I know for a fact that some of those servers were alter used for entirely illegal purposes, from illegal gambling, child pornography to control networks for some of the largest botnets in the world.

Not forgetting that one of those datacenters was for Google and even they have mirrors of nearly every indexed webpage, including images, including from CP sites.

Yet they aren’t extended the same treatment as the pirate bay guys are, that never hosted any actual illegal content.

cat

October 27, 2014

shit this is not hard at all to believe I myself have been found guilty in court in the USA and when I went to show my defense evidence the judge said no I don’t want to see your papers I have all the facts I need I will mail you my ruling and 10 days later in the mail I got my you were found guilty so I appealed it paid $75 to file they said we will mail you a court date 3 days later I called to find out the date of my hearing they said call in 2 days I did they said there is no date set yet call in 2 days the 9th day they said it will be set in about 30 days you will get a letter so the next day on the 10th day later I get mail that says u were found guilty in your absence of your hearing so I call and they say oh you can appeal it for $75 F that the its cheaper to pay the fine and not have to spend $ for apeeals and lawers and they know it if its under $5000 and in a commonwealth state you will be found guilty by a court of one crooked judge paid off by someone and there is no panel of jury one corrupt asshole makes the ruleing based on what makes the county and state the most $ and what you have for evidence don’t even play a part

The fact that some of it is true goes a way to validating the rest of it. The transcripts and recordings of interviews can verify or debunk other of Peter’s claims. On the balance of probability, though, given that so much of this is already in court records, Sweden should be embarrassed at the ineptitude of its legal system. For starters, the behaviour of Keyzer needs much closer scrutiny, given his relationship with Warner Brothers and the points that Peter makes regarding timing. Also, the threats to Sweden are well documented, and my suggestion is that the new film, The Interview, is just a taste of what Hollywood will do to embarrass its own Government. The fact that Sweden has just crumpled is of greater concern. It would appear that national sovereignty is meaningless in the face of American threats. No wonder the Americans spend more on defence than the nearest 26 other nations combined do, and 25 of those are supposed to be allies. They may have to protect themselves against their “friends”.

Thanks, fixed. I wrote most of the translated text on my Android pad, and it didn’t really like the huge wall of text, so typos did sneak in due to the keyboard lag…

BS in the USA

July 6, 2012

As a citizen of the US, I’d like to apologize for the actions of our misguided politicians and all the evil, self-serving corporations that foist their greed upon the good people of other countries. The legal proceedings that I’ve just read about are an abomination that needs the full light of day shone upon it. Sweden needs to stand up to the US and respect it’s own laws and policies, not bow down to pressure from Hollywood. I’m embarrassed and outraged by this sham of justice. Rick…keep this issue in the forefront. You do incredible work and I thank you for your efforts.

mijj

July 7, 2012

> “As a citizen of the US, I’d like to apologize for the actions of our misguided politicians”

The politicians are under Corporate control and work to serve their interests. I think the time when politicians represented citizens’ interests has long passed. Political activities have nothing at all to do with the people’s wishes.

You would only have something to apologise for if you lived in a democracy.

Zzzzzz

July 7, 2012

Maybe the time when politicians represented citizens’ interests has not passed, but has yet to come. The more parties that share the views of The Pirate Party manage to gain popularity and push for more transparency, the less corruption there will be. If being in politics no longer makes it possible to easily accept bribes from lobbyists, those bastards who orchestrate such corruption will hopefully start working for corporations instead of governments/courts/parliaments.

The only problem right now is that success in elections mostly depends on how many posters saying “If you elect us, we give you free money!!!!11one” the party manages to put up. People don’t seem to care much about their rights once someone promises to help them financially (obviously those promises are not fulfilled anyway).

Agent of S.T.O.R.M.

November 1, 2014

S.T.O.R.M. (Social anit-Tyranny Online Reaction Media).

Quote, “Maybe the time when politicians represented citizens’ interests has not passed, but has yet to come”, unquote.

Well said! However, i would go as far as to say that this could be the case ,if it were not for the fact that Hell will have frozen over (for a millenia) before you will ever get a politician representing his/her/their countries people fairly, legally and righteously! For every 100 politicians that serve in office you can guarentee that 99 are corrupt, and are politicians soley for the purpose of elevating themselves, and their ego’s, to extreme wealth status.

This has allways been so and will allways be because, it it the flawed genetic code of Homo Sapiens. The majority of humanity is either selfish, greedy, materialistic, egotistical, evil, corrupt etc. etc. The few of us who are not, and therefore do not fit in with, “the in crowd”, are bullied, ridiculed hounded and persecuted their entire lives society…..because they are terrified of non conformists.

Powerful corporations/people, politicians, security agencies, police and the law are the real criminals and terrorists of society but your average everyday citizen is either too scared, or too lazy, to stand up for their rights and speak as one voice universally to put a stop to all the corruption.

The treatment of Pirate Bay staff illustrates perfectly the length that the law, the rich and the powerful are prepared to go in their breaking and bending of the rules of justice. I wish they were as hard on organized crime copyrite piracy!

Anonymous

July 8, 2012

Reading this story has simply solidified my resolve that I will do everything in my power at every opportunity to destroy copyright. The part that particularly stunned me was where a newspaper did a survey of over 50,000 people and 99.8% of them said there should be no conviction. That’s absolutely stunning for ANY survey, let alone one involving a copyright trial.

Anon

July 9, 2012

I disagree – copyright is good, it has the potential to stop people being completely ripped off from their works.

However, the current copyright system is broken down and abused by anybody who thinks they can make a penny from it.

The current copyright system needs to be destroyed, and a new one needs to be created – one that protects creators of works, but doesn’t allow for this kind of shit.

Anonymous

July 9, 2012

I believe you are wrong. Copyright is not necessary to keep people creating and receiving value for their talent. I invite you to keep reading on this same website for several conscience raisers regarding the subject.

Nicolai

July 14, 2012

Just as democracy has the potential of being “rule by the people” and where equality and freedom has been identified as important characteristics? There is no current democracy where true equality and freedom exist. Im not concluding whether it’s bad or not, but be honest with it. Humans are corrupt and we better face it instead of lying to ourselves.

This is just another proof that humans destroys (abuse) every good hearted intention (system) for own benefit, usually profit.

The worlds real criminals today are the ones with “ties”, because they hide their criminal activities behind laws, lobbying, coorporate interests, national security etc. Im not sure they actually are aware of it since I believe they lie to themselves as well.

I would wish Peter good luck, but I realized a long time ago that there is no hope for humans.

big daddy phil

July 16, 2012

the problem with what you just stated is totally in accurate.
most of the us makes less then 30,000 a year butt even with 2 incomes a year at 30,000 equaling 60,000 a year is barely a living as the cost of every thing increases and less jobs becoming available.

so by the time most ppl pay there bills and have enough gas money and food to survive there is little to no money for them to purchase these items leaving ppl to make do with very little entertainment WHO IN THE FUCK WANTS TO SIT AROUND BORED OUT OF THERE MIND ALL THE TIME THE RIGHT WAY FOR GOVERMENTS TO DEAL WITH COPY RIGHT WHOULD BE TO FIX OUR ECONOMY FIRST AND BRING OUR DAMN JOBS BACK

!ROCK ON PIRATEBAY WE ALL LOVE AND SUPPORT YOU!

Anonymous2

July 16, 2012

Same here. We have now musicians and movies making more money than ever, and still attacking “piracy”. I used to go to the cinema, and used to buy DVDs, support my favorite singers and bands and buy each and every book I find worth. But no more. I know that it isn´t big, but it is at least something that I CAN do. And, just so you know, I am a musician that knows very well what copyright is.

appear

July 19, 2012

I think a lot of people are already doing that, not as part of a campaign but because they’re tired of the shit. No one brings down the recording industry like the recording industry.

Let’s walk back down memory lane and recollect all the mafia techniques they’ve used to harass people and make examples of harmless people by demonstrably ruining their lives. Why should we be sympathetic to people like that?

People get tired of them. People who used to consume (purchase) media voraciously got tired of it. They’re bringing down their business all by their greedy corrupt selves.

brentwoodbratt

July 15, 2012

I am also a US citizen and as I write this I am worried that some how I will be tracked down and harassed. Our Country has become so corrupt I don’t know who to trust anymore. Being online as muchas we are now, it is easy for the CIA to track people who they believe are trouble makers. I sincerely hope that Sweden and her people can stop this global bullying and restore Sweden to it’s original balance.

Squeezit

July 15, 2012

You’re being a bit overdramatic.
Our government will make no effort in tracking us down, because we’re too small to make a different. The only way we CAN make a difference is if we managed to rally up enough people, such as we did with the SOPA act.

However we need to do it again, against the whole system. Against the fact that Hollywood quite literally OWNS our government.
This country is bound to be torn down eventually, and now is as good a time as any. I’d be on the side against our government, and they can track me down if they wish, I will only make it public. Of course they’ll call me a terrorist.

appear

July 19, 2012

“Misguided” and “greed” don’t often work well in the same sentence.

Freedom Fighter

November 26, 2014

To everyone posting about the greed of the evil USA and Hollywood: You are placing your blame on the wrong institution. The fact of the matter is that all countries across the globe are living in debt to (and therefore under the thumb of) of a small handful of powerful bankers. The entire world has become a corporate oligarchy. And the divisions of nations are illusions created and maintained by the elite 1% who are controlling the entire fate of the world. As long as we are separated by borders, and citizens everywhere are distracted from the big picture by worrying about the fate of their own “country”, they are able to rule us all from the shadows. So in a way, this is the most important case in the history of humanity. That’s because it’s the first time that this shadow power has shown it’s hand so blatantly and publicly. I mean, when 99.8% of a population on a 50,000 person poll votes to drop the charges (which is probably the greatest show of solidarity every displayed by a population on any subject in the history of the world), and the government completely ignores the people it is supposed to represent, it’s becomes pretty obvious that our entire concept of a government that answers to the people has been nothing but an illusion designed to placate us. No government in any country in the world truly represents it’s people. They answer only to the central banking cartels and major international corporate powers. This case is the proof. They aren’t even tiptoeing around it anymore. It’s blatant. It’s in your face. They might as well be cramming it down our throats. But the good news is that this case has forced their hand. Now they’ve shown their true colors. Their cards are on the table. And we can stop living with the delusion that our governments are here to do anything other than lead us down the path of legalized modern slavery aka the debt cycle. They want us to feel helpless, but we’re not. We hold all the cards if we but wake up for a moment and realize it. The beast of the entire corporate slavery machine depends on all of us feeding it. The answer is to stop paying taxes. Collectively. And join the Ubuntu movement. Fire all public servants. Limit political service periods to 2-4 years. No more lifelong politicians. Boycott the entire system and bring it to it’s knees and force them all to answer for their crimes, without firing a single shot. We have the power. And every county watching this right now needs to realize that this is the face of the real enemy and without a strong collectivist reaction to these events, YOUR COUNTRY IS NEXT.

I found this very moving, even yesterday reading a roughly google-translated version. (& Thanks for smothing it out – much appreciated!) Especially the end:

‘ . . . A debt that practically means I don’t have a future in Sweden as a country, if I want to live off of anything other than breadcrumbs or the goodwill of my friends. This debt is equivalent to exile, to deportation. I will need to become an economic refugee from Sweden. . .’

This is crazy. And to think this is the supposed enemy of creators, when he went on to create Flattr – literally one of the most useful tools for new creators online. I know this shouldn’t matter in the judgement – I mean, if this guy shot someone, then obviously he should go to jail even if he had gone on to be Gandhi. But it just sucks that someone so useful to the community might have to be locked up and basically bankrupted.

Ed Think

July 6, 2012

That is exactly what you get when you go away from Christianism (protestantism)… Post secular worldview will cut corners and abandon justice…Please don’t confuse Catholicism with true Christianity (for those bringing the example of the middle ages)…Say good bye to your liberties . . .In Sweden a sermon about homosexuality will land you in jail, where is the freedom of expression? Freedom of expression is there not to talk about the weather but to talk about controversial issues . . .

Free Internet

July 6, 2012

Remember, copyright was basically an attack on Protestantism

Mårten

July 6, 2012

“In Sweden a sermon about homosexuality will land you in jail”
Not true. You need to check your facts. You are allowed to say just about anything here, as long as you are a priest. For the rest of us there is a law that prohibits hate speech. It is a controversial law, however, freedom of expression doesn’t mean you can say anything and get away with it. In many countries there are laws against defamation, hatespeech, confidentiality etc…

grymmaste

July 6, 2012

” .In Sweden a sermon about homosexuality will land you in jail,”
only judgement we have about that issue says its fine so where did you get that notion from?

I think this is the most shitheaded, utterly reality-defying comment I have received on this blog in eight years, and the competition is quite stiff.

I had a very long, sarcastic comment lined up, but I can’t really add much of value beyond the completely obvious. Dogma, including religious such, is the long-term enemy of any society. The monotheistic, Abrahamitic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) are the worst of all, and have accounted for more deaths in history than any genocide – not to mention the brutal persecution of anybody questioning the privileges of the one-percenters in any society where religion is allowed to set the agenda.

This parody of justice, as horrible as it is, is absolutely peanuts to what religious nutjobs have called “systems of justice” historically and contemporarily.

#notsureiftrollorjustdumb

OTH Radar

July 14, 2012

I wanted to laugh and applaud at the same time. The utter bluntness of your reply was outstanding as well as hilarious. Thanks for that, and brilliant work on the article, I don’t know how I would survive here in the US without the internet and folks like you keeping me open to important information without this country’s conservative bias (liberal media my ass). Anyway, before I end up writing a novel, thank you, and keep doing what you do.

pelthead

July 15, 2012

anyone who thinks one political party is actually better than another is really nothing more than part of the whole problem.

(speaking toward the US as it is all I am familiar with)

Funny, too, how you seem to like the liberals yet it is the liberal leaders (hollywood) who are behind the very mess this artical speaks of.

LOL … YES!!! Finally someone who sees Dogma the way that I do… or at least the first I’ve come across that is so blunt and open about it.. I’m adding part of this comment as one of my favourite quotes ever! THANK YOU!!! 😀

frank

July 16, 2012

Rick,

While I very much appreciate your translation of Peter’s plea, I feel sorry that you fell right into the troll’s trap and betrayed your own prejudices—ones that are in dire need of education and open-mindedness.

I have no love for organized religion, but what is more destructive to a society is the love the educated to flaunt their own blanketed biases, masquerading them as hatred for ignorance and bigotry.

Many of those who are in power—the corporations, the establishment, the crown, the pope, whatever or whoever they are, through out the history, has always used what is at their disposal to side-step due justice and wage wars according to their interest.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism (yes, even Buddhism, read history of India if you are surprised) have all been used by the establishment for various gains, some ending atrocities. Sometimes ones will invent their own “religion” (e.g., Hitler, Kim Jung Il) if it helps their cause, and some will twist racial differences and weave together a story, a “religion”, if you will, that unite people, capitalize on the naivete of the masses for personal gain.

Do you not know that the Chinese cultural revolution, one of the most devastating, long-lasting political movements in recent memory, carried out in the most populous country in the world (even officially admitted a grave mistake by the government that carried it out years after), was based on atheistic philosophies?

Get it into your head.

If even learned folks like you cannot understand the real cause behind human-caused tragedy and blindly throwing blanketed criticisms at a groups of people, be it a religion, belief, race, region, or sex, then we are doomed.

If you did learn a little about the origin of these religions you are so quick to dismiss as the cause of human tragedy, recall that their teachings in the beginning are very different from what some of their offspring have turned into and they often spoke against various injustice and inhumane conditions at the time.

Yes, there are people like the above troll, whether they believe it themselves or not (which I seriously doubt in this case), love to fling bigoted statements on public forums to get a rise out people.

But you should know better.

Erik

July 17, 2012

I do agree totally with Frank.

Rick I really appreciate most things you do, but your troll response above really shows a lack of judgment and understanding.

You will likely get similar off-topic troll-like religious comments again, please don’t fall into the trap of boosting (anti-)religious wars again .

Firstly, atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of god(s). You cannot attribute a any political action or stance (such as the cultural revolution in china) to atheism, because it is nothing more than the disbelief in the existence of god(s). Heck, many argue that Buddhists and Shintos are therefore in fact atheists. Atheism is therefore just as irrelevant to the cultural revolution in China as Hitlers belief in a Christian god was to the results of his Nazism.

Furthermore, faith is the accepting a belief without any evidence that said belief is true. This is the essence of any given religion, and it is exactly the reason why religion is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) impediments of democratic and technological advances.

The reason why religion has been “misused” by world leaders to do what you perceive as evil is therefore because of its nature. Rick does therefore nothing wrong in criticizing this lunatic and religion – if people had a skeptical, scientific viewpoint and understanding of the world, then they wouldn’t be persuaded to fly airplanes into a skyscrapers, or blow up subways. If more people devoted themselves to understand the workings of nature, instead of devoting themselves to a god of which they have no proof exists, then maybe smallpox would have been just one of many eradicated diseases, and so forth.

The fact that faith is viewed as virtue by many, and not a serious mental condition, is a sad explanation for many of the worlds problems.

frank

August 2, 2012

To Lobax

Very sadly, you fall into the same trap – the endless, useless bi-partisan debate on merits vs evils of religion/faith.

Do you actually read and understand what my comments were driving at? Obviously not. Like a well-behaved politician in the US, you fall well behind party lines and are quick to jump to conclusions and sees matters as either blue or red.

Can’t you see that the enemy here is not the one disagreeing with your viewpoint (in this case, religion/faith is ultimately to be blamed for atrocities), but ignorance, prejudice, and opinions formed because of blind loyalty to the “side” you are on?

If you’ve actually read it carefully, you’ll see that I have NEVER CLAIMED that atheism is at the cause of anything awful – I simply use several cases to illustrate and cast serious doubt on the claim that Rick made. If you make a claim, you should be able to provide evidence for it, but at the same time anyone can bring up counter-examples. Counter-examples are to falsify or cast doubt on a claim. Hopefully that’s clear for you, and hopefully that brings back materials from your primary education on logic.

Speaking of claims, it seems you love to spew them out without any reason or support. “Religion is one of the biggest impediments of democratic and technological advances” – where do you even get that? Just so you don’t jump the gun again, I am not claiming at all religion “helps” these advances, but I am questioning your claim. You, like a mindless talking drone, can’t help but spew out these unsupported, blanketed statements – how you are different from someone who claims the opposite: “religion is one of the biggest catalysts to democratic and technological advances”? I would love to see what you can bring up as evidence to your claim, but I guess you’re not interested in an actual discussion.

Take a step back and look at the big picture, and perhaps you’ll see you’re not in a one-dimensional spectrum – the belief systems, or more generally the worldviews, of different people in the world are multidimensional and complex. It is easy, and therefore tempting, for one draw a simple line and sit on one side of it – most will not do further work to understand and discuss the different aspects and latent “parameters” of the system. It is a sad, sad thing that, instead of trying understand, mutually, why we believe and act as we do in a deeper way, we make uninformed, blanketed, prejudiced harsh criticisms of groups of people, driving us further and further apart from each other. “They hate America because they hate freedom” is bad, but “Islam makes people fly planes into skyscrapers” is hardly better.

And in case you missed it, the emphasis two sentences before is NOT on “criticism”, but the adjectives before it.

To make a correct to your statement: atheism, like many other religious or non-religious worldviews, is a *belief* about the non-existence of a divine being. If you simply “disbelieve” everything you’ve heard thus far, than you are closer to someone who is agnostic. Atheism is based on the presumed, unprovable notion that there is no god, as is theism.

Atheism (or the atheistic part of one’s personal belief system), or any non-religious belief, as with any worldviews out there, it has an effect on what you value, how you act, how you react, and how you relate to the society. It can be taken advantage of by someone with enough charisma and persuasion.

The hope for the world is that doesn’t matter where you are from, what your experiences are, and what your worldviews are, we can all come together on the ground of open-mindedness and logical exchange, instead of slinging the same old, tired insults at each other.

vaffangool

December 4, 2012

Thank you for being so articulate when I am angered beyond intelligibility. At least we can expect Peter Sundes to walk upright, and properly-nourished , from his unjust confinement. The best revenge for this injustice is justice itself–Peter deserves world-wide acknowledgement of the outrageous extent to which justice has been corrupted in this case.

As word spreads of Jim Keyzer’s criminal conduct, Tomas Norström’s blatant conflicts of interest s, and Thomas Bodström’s willingness to pimp Swedish justice out to private American corporations, surely one of these villains has felt compelled to defend–or at least rationalise–his part in this betrayal of the public trust.

Here in the States, I can find no record of any such statement.

To build public awareness to the tipping point, the perpetrators of this miscarriage must be presented with an unending wealth of opportunities–continuing beyond Peter Sundes’ release–to publicly establish their own accounting of events. It’s not entirely intuitive to gift one’s adversary with the opportunity for FUD or propaganda–but given enough data points, inconsistencies fall away and the truth will always out.

I believe this is a strategy that represents our best hope of forcing shame, remorse and regret on a justice ministry that has yet to show any interest in the demonstrable facts of this case. It is a strategy that requires only an independent news media and a skeptical viewing audience. I doubt I am the first to arrive at this belief.

I am outraged at at the dearth of progress so far; I am disappointed by the rampant cowardice, the abandonment of journalistic integrity , and the abdication of investigative responsibility.

However, being homosexual WOULD land you in jail in many countries before these horrible christian views were eradicated from our laws. Christianity is a direct enemy of liberty.

Ed Think

July 9, 2012

BTW I am encouraging “hate speech” I am just dealing with the principle…
To all they people that are in denial: Pastor in Sweden charge for preaching against homosexuality: http://chalcedon.edu/Research/Articles/Swedish-Pastor-Faces-Jail-For-Preaching-Against-Homosexuality/
Mårten: The law should apply to everybody, freedom of speech is a right of EVERYBODY (not just “priest”)
Oldtimer: You need to read more, freedom came from Protestantism. All the Protestant nations are the places where freedom sprung, let’s review: Holland, UK, Norway, Sweden, Iceland (the big defenders of Wikileaks), Germany, USA, Canada, etc. Name me one atheist built society where you really have freedom, let’s see those “Freedom loving atheist countries” you mean, North Korea, China, Communist Russia, Cuba, etc? and the list goes on and on. Go and try your freedom of speech there and see if you don’t end up in jail. The laws of Sweden ARE based on christian principles . . .

Nightarrow85

July 10, 2012

North Korea, China, Communist Russia, Cuba ?

None of those are atheist countries. In fact – a lot of Cuba is CATHOLIC. ANd why does everyone always type down Russia as ‘Communist Russia’. The Red Scare died out a long time ago…

Religion is what people make of it. A christian can do terrible thing in the name of religion, or he can aid the needy instead. Alot of people in the East practice Buddhism – which is an observance of pacifism and the path the peaceful enlightenment.

Ed Think – you’re specifically pointed out countries indicate that you are an American, like myself. No where else do I hear of the sarcastic disdain for China, North Korea, Cuba and COMMUNIST Russia. (Seriously I cant get over the fact that you used that phrase).

Learn acceptance of your fellow human beings.

dreisday

July 14, 2012

The only reason that the countries you have listed as being christian have been successful is because they have managed to control their people and forced them to do as they are told with the threat of ‘the wrath of god’. Luckily here in the UK since the end of WWII and the decline in religion as a whole we have had many more liberal governments and we now have a human right act, the NHS and other great services and protections. However we would not thane been able to get to this stage if christianity had not been used to force people into virtual slavery previously. So maybe religion is a good kick start for a country but people soon realise that it is a bunch of crap used by leaders (previously Lords and Land owners) to control the peasants and force them into doing as they are told. But eventually the masses realise that actually they have free will, they reject religion and a truly free country emerges. (i know its a little bit off topic and badly punctuated but I’m really pissed off right now!!!!)

Yes a true country emerges: Power for the rich, racism, corruption, criticism against those who dont share the society’s point of view, disrispect for those who think different than you and others opinions; all of this disguised in free will, justice and peace; of course there was oppression in religious matters, but dont bullshit me, dont tell me your scientifics or atheist leaders dont mock believers of anything else, and this “true country” society doing the same.

Atheists and skeptics are just morons looking a way to ridicule others beliefs and forcing down out trhroats your beliefs or bullying us.

I believe in god, so what? im more free than any of you stupid thick headed egocentrist dumbasses, believing in god or paranormal stuff wont stop me from listening “satanic” metal bands, playing the most violent videogames or movies, downloading piracy, hating epople, beating the [email protected] out of ANYONE who screw with me (children women and old hags included) and raping you stupid skeptic atheist whores (atheist skeptic women) or your sisters (atheist skeptic men).

Fuck you atheist and skeptics, and fuck your “true country”, and the goverment, and the police and the wealthy i hate you all and id love a violent revolution against you.

And i know, piracy is so called stealing, BUT DONT TELL ME THOSE STUPID ASSHOLE WEALTHY PIECES OF CRAP ARENT RICH ALREADY LIVING IN THIER MANSIONS BEING TOTAL DOUCHES TO THE POOR AND DIFFERENT FROM THEM (not that i care about them, i only care about animals and my beloved ones) AND STILL THEY WONT LOWER THE PRICES OF THEIR PRODUCTS, i bet that if they did that they would have HUGE sales and the piracy would almost completely dissapear; you might ask what does it have to do with the other stuff i posted? well your “true country”, thats the reason, thats what it defends too, they are just the bitches of the wealthy and powerful, just as you are stupid skeptics the bitches of your science, and no, im not religions slave as i stated before, the only thing that keeps me at bay of debauchery, revenge against everyone i hate and rebellion is the oppression of the powerful (cops, goverment and that crap).

jimbo

July 6, 2012

is there any difference between what has happened here with Peter than has happened in other cases, in particular, the Megaupload case? it seems to be a typical tactic of the USA government, law enforcement and entertainment industries combined. do exactly as we say, as we want or your country will suffer sanctions that will eventually break it! the fact that what is wanted is illegal and immoral bullying seems irrelevant. Sweden obviously bent over and grabbed ankles for the US, just as the UK has done recently with O’Dwyer and by introducing one of the worst DEA in a democratic country. the people count as nothing as long as big business can get their way! even the EU Commission is ignoring citizens and just pushing harder and harder to please it’s paymasters!

Colin

July 7, 2012

The difference between Sweden & New Zealand is that the New Zealand judiciary seem to showing a refreshing lack of fear and cringing before the mighty US of A.

Both governments bent over and took it from the US though. And I’d suggest that the people of both countries should remember that come election time. After all, in a democracy, the politicians represent the people, or they SHOULD do at any rate.

If we were still tu use 18th century vocabulary, most European governments wouldn’t be called “democracies”, but “representative government”. In a democracy, the people chose their laws, not their law makers.

The difference is quite noticeable in at least 2 examples : the European constitution, was refused by the French people, then accepted by the French parliament. (I don’t know for the other countries, since many of them didn’t even ask the people.) Then the Central Banks’ independance, which effectively prevent state to borrow money at 0% interest rate. Which is basically responsible for our debt and the enslavement that currently ensues. Most people don’t know about this, but I bet that if they did, they would vote against it.

And of course, there is all this IP stuff.

ammo42

July 7, 2012

The threat of trade sanctions is bogus, since sanctioning Sweden would have implied sanctioning the whole EEC (or otherwise it would be useless), which is just insane.

jimbo

July 7, 2012

insane it may have been. real big excuse for some other reason, it may have been. you can bet your bottom dollar, the US was behind it and certain people were ‘encouraged’ to take particular views which led to particular actions. the fact that the judge was deemed ‘not biased’ when he was a member of Swedish Association for Copyright shows bias in his choosing. unless people are stupid, even an idiot can see the leaning here! TPB guys were hung out to dry by their own government, under orders from the US. the citizens need to remember that at election time and take no prisoners when they go to the election booth because they dont know who will be next or for what reason. when you think about it, TPB fiasco was the start of all the copyright trials that have gone on and why the industries involved, having been given what they wanted here, using false evidence and lies, just wont stop until they have control of the ‘net, the ultimate aim, as it is the ultimate distribution platform. without the ‘encouragement’ given, there is no way any true court of justice could have ruled in the way this one did!

I sincerely doubt that the goal behind the entertainment industry’s strategy of ruthlessly going after filesharing services and high profile filesharers is ‘total control of the internet’. Much more likely is that it is a (very successful) strategy to _win time_, in order to get the business models in place, which can replace filesharing to the ordinary “consumer”.

So, it’s a priority going after the most dominant filesharing players online – who are also the most visible ones. Why Peter was included in the Pirate Bay case at all was about bringing him out the media landscape, where he was becoming much too visible for the entertainment industry top people to be really comfortable.

That is what the Pirate Bay case was about. And that is what the MegaUpload case was about. And what all the others were about.

Ultimately, we will have to make this strategy fail, and not buy into the model where we slowly replace the interconnected web with the world of silos (apps, music tracks, products, items that can be bought on an industrial scale) reducing everyone from a (potential) participatory contributor to what’s going on – to a ‘consumer’ – a couch potato. And make a lot of noise about not buying into it and why.

Anonymous

July 7, 2012

PS. Rick, why is the type and screen space for commenting so damn small? Or the resolution of my monitor so high? You’ll encourage more comments if you improve the amount of screen space on your blog devoted to commenting – including the type and space for typing! Best, Morten

jimbo

July 8, 2012

perhaps the ‘take over the ‘net’ is a bit vague. to me, what they want is to control who can download what, from where. they cant shut every website that distributes or every means available but, let’s face it, the ‘net is the best media distribution platform yet invented. control that and you basically control everything. if they can get that, they dont have to really adapt and torrents, etc will become the best means of sharing, unlike the scourge it is now billed as. the entertainment industries downfall, to me anyway, is their never ending greed! they want it all and cant stand anyone else having even a little bit of what they consider as being theirs and only theirs. that even applies to their own artists. if they were to properly negotiate, some sites may join them but i am sure what would happen is that as soon as a deal was done, the industries would try to take over and screw their partners. shame, because the work has already been done to build customer bases and portfolios of files, so no ‘start from scratch’ needed.

Azureheart

July 15, 2012

The one thing that boggles my mind.. why do people need money? What is money? Why is money important?

Money is an artificial and inaccurate representation of the worth of an entity. Money isn’t USED for anything other than logical assignment of worth. Money only holds power when the people using it believe in it.

People, you need to realize, true power lies within we the people! Not with in money, not with in authority, not with in nations or religion. We the people, are the power of this world, and we the people are shackled within our own minds into believing others have power over us.

Drop your shackles and unite with those you believe in, stand up for what is right!

SFwriter

July 15, 2012

Irrespective of how highly I regard myself, how generously I perceive my value to society, the local grocer is not going to give me food for the week based on my shining personality. Money cannot be eliminated from society without a substitute method of exchanging value between individuals. It may be work-exchange; it may be simple barter and trade, but ultimately those ARE what money represents. Money was created so that we don’t have to carry a bushel of apples around when we go out seeking meat and flour. To think otherwise is just being naive.

You should all know that Sweden has become dictatorship as regards freedom of speech. The judiciary system is downright corrupt. What makes people believe that this is not the case, is the self-picture that Sweden works hard to create, which is completely false. On my blog I try to describe the true picture of Sweden, that I realised was the case in 2009, when I realised that the politicians in a tacit understanding with the journalists had hoodwinked me (and the rest of the people). Click on my link.

ANNM

July 7, 2012

There is nothing random about Swedish layman judges. They are appointed by the political parties currently in power and are very often members of said parties, usually retired local politicians.

For those who like more info. Here is the evidence presented at the trial and the verdict it self.

Peter and the text he has written seem to lack a rather large amount of info, including such as the mentioning the contract he signed when opening the offshore com

Sten

July 7, 2012

For those who like more info. Here is the evidence presented at the trial and the verdict it self.

Peter and the text he has written seem to lack a rather large amount of info, including such as mentioning the contract Peter signed when opening the offshore company that was to handle the adverising money Peter activly participated in bringing in. All proven by evidence.

The law doesn’t work like that. Nothing you wrote just now is illegal, nor was Peter convicted of doing any of that which you just tried to smear on him. He was convicted of sending one invoice, configuring a load balancer, and for arranging categories.

It’s these things that are in question. Not incorporating a company. That’s irrelevant.

Sten

July 7, 2012

Rick, det kallas uppsåt.
The Intent was proven so I am not smearing, Peter smeared him self as the evidence and verdict shows.

Has anyone translated the verdict into english so that everyone can read all of it?

You appear to be too busy gloating to notice that intent has no bearing on the above actions whatsoever, nor does an intent to make money.

The above puts into question the element of actus reus – was there a criminal act committed? Apparently, the answer appears to be no.

Your talk of “intent” is only relevant if there has been a criminal action committed, leading to the next step, mens rea or intent.

When I cross the street, it doesn’t matter if I’m thinking in a criminal mindset, because crossing the street is not illegal.

Sten

July 8, 2012

Rick, intent to commit a crime is intent to commit a crime. Peter’s text is not relevant. You should realy read the evidence, the email conversations clearly show that the four individuals know that the avtivity they are participating in is illegal.

But I understood there was no definition of a crime committed. The evidence might indicate as you suggest, but what was connected to the charges seems irrelevant. Now that PB has been shut down, again and probably for good this time, it wont take long for others to take up the same role. Seems a giant waste of time, effort and money to me. Unfortunately, all the Swedish authorities have done is to undermine the trust that people should have it its legal system. Obviously the constitutional process of justice can be subverted by Government, and it is not just this case that proves it by the way.

How do we helo free Peter “Brokep” Sunde and the other Pirate Bay guys?

Oldtimer

July 8, 2012

Yes, please do read the “evidence” presented at the trial and the actual verdict. Nowhere in that is there evidence of a crime being committed by Peter.

But that’s not the crucial part of Peter’s text. Guilty or not guilty, the way the actual process was handled is outrageous. Nowhere was any consideration given to due process or presumption of innocence. Instead we see ministers interfering, bribed police officers, heavily biased judges, and, essentially, a miscarriage of justice.

We don’t normally treat even murderers this way. Why is it accepted in this case?

Sten

July 8, 2012

The evidence of the email conversations between the four convicted, includes the information that they all know their actions are illegal.
Now, Peter’s is through his text trying to state that he is acused of using a particular computer for a particular task.
But this is wrong.
Read the verdict instead of basing every statement on Peter’s strawman. The four convicted insividuals have through their email conversations more or less stated the equivilant of “Yes, we are guilty”.

Oldtimer

July 8, 2012

I have read the verdict. I also followed the trial in detail.

But you keep missing the point entirely. I can only assume it is because you want Peter to be evil and the swedish legal system to be spotless. Don’t let reality change your mind, by all means.

Sten

July 8, 2012

No I do not belive the Swedish legal system is faultless. And i do not believe you have read the verdict since the Tingsrätts verdict in no manner at all mentiones the LB Peter is refering to. Hovrättens verdict refers to the LB in paranthesis.
Peter is creating a strawman with his letter and you would have known that if you read the verdict and the evidence.

I have tried to publish the verdict here three times, but it might be to long since it has not worked .

The LB is only briefly mentioned in a paranthesis in the second verdict and not at all in Tingsrättsdomen.
Peter is creating a strawman by pretending the LB is what he is convicted for. But that is wrong – He is convicted since the email conversations clearly shows him as activly taking part in the running of TPB.

Timmy

July 9, 2012

Thanks Sten. Its nice to see someone actually bringing some facts to all of this.

[…] However what had happened is that a search engine for torrents has led to a prison sentence whilst an established search engine has impunity. The founder of Pirate Bay has been given a prison sentence, and he has just written this 4000 word appeal for clemency. It reads to me typical of 1% bullying that has no legal basis, and certainly no community (99%) basis. Here is the appeal (taken from here):- […]

I find it sad that this leads to right-wing conservatives taking the power in Sweden. I just hope us Danish Socialdemocrats and the Socialists in France can actually show how important it is to have left-wing in power. Basically, we need to implement the flat-rate tax for culture, something like $10/month for unlimited access to content online. It’s really that easy. And you “legalize” piracy. You just have them announce that all attempts at suing “pirates” should be cancelled as that type of procedure is a hopeless waste of time for anyone involved. It’s absolutely urgent that people get access to the best content possible and that content creators get paid directly as soon as possible. Don’t let them sue Children for Downloading, and don’t let them sensor the web moronicly.

ANNM

July 8, 2012

A flatrate tax is a stupid idea. Who gets to decide how that money is distributed? Based on what? Should all downloads and uploads be monitored or go through a centralised system so you can see who is downloaded the most?

And why should there be a tax when there’s no need for it? The entertainment industry is making more money today than they were before large-scale filesharing existed. There is no need to subsidise them further.

Person

July 9, 2012

In several countries downloading is already completely legal and blank media is taxed.

[…] himself. The full 4000 word letter was published earlier this week on Sunde’s blog and has been translated to English by Rick […]

Tawdry West

July 8, 2012

“aiding and abetting an assist of a theoretically possible crime”

Tawdry West

July 8, 2012

…“aiding and abetting an assist of a theoretically possible crime” ??? Nice -_-

Thomas Anderson

July 9, 2012

I never used the pirate bay or ever agreed with it. But the fact of the matter is he knew he was doing something illegal from the start. If you couldn’t learn from napter, Kazaa, limwire etc. Then you aren’t very bright. He was getting his rocks off on the idea and thought he’d never get caught. Now he did. And for the record mafia dons and druglords never do anything illegal either. The over see it. Charles Manson never murdered anyone. He thought he had an out with the “I just made the site I never stole anything” fallback.

Criminal law doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t matter if Napster was illegal, it doesn’t matter if The Pirate Bay was illegal.

What happened in this case was that the basic principles of criminal law were turned around. The process went “This operation has criminal components. Who is responsible for the brand of this operation? The responsible for the brand must be convicted of the criminal act”. That goes against every piece of due process, and I expect heads to roll in a few years’ time (if not sooner) over this.

To be convicted of a crime, you must individually – individually – be connected to the specific criminalized action. Brokep was defending and supporting The Pirate Bay in media. That’s what he did as part of the organization. Defending the brand is not criminal, that’s free speech – I defend The Pirate Bay and explain its net benefit to society, too.

Remember, Napster was never convicted by criminal law, it was sued as part of a civil law; it was sued as the legal entity Napster. If The Pirate Bay had been a legal entity, it too could have been sued too as a legal entity. But we’re talking about criminal law here as it applies to individuals. And individuals need to actually have committed a crime – committed it themselves – to be convicted.

Well, except in this case, apparently.

Or rather, except in this case and all the others where the convicted don’t have the power of voice and broadcast that Brokep has.

Sten

July 9, 2012

Eh, no.

The process was like this.

The authorities finds an illegal activity.

They investigate to find out who is responsible for the activity.

They find four people responsible and hence press charges against them. The email conversations (between the four) show and proof that they are all involved in the activity, the email conversations also show that all of them are aware of the fact that their activity is illegal.

If you want to find the “least” guilty then it´s actually Knäckebröds Calle. But his emails speaks loudly against him, since he in text clearly states that he knows that the TPB activity is illegal and suggests a move to other countries as a mean of solving the legal issues.

You’re rapidly approaching a Monty Pythonesque “This isn’t an argument”, “yes it is”, “no it isn’t” level here with your ability to diverge from the points raised against your objections.

“The activity” is not illegal to criminal liability. Specific actions can be – not running and maintaining a site in itself. There is a stark contrast here between criminal and civil law.

You keep defending the old guard, just like you did when defending the ridiculous copyright monopoly infringement of the pro-ACTA poster. Are you just here to contradict people?

Sten

July 9, 2012

Rick,
Continuously believing one has a point (when one has not) is what got Peter where he is going.

Running an activity that commits crime is a crime and Peter was aware of that the activity was illegal. The emails clearly prove this.

It is not illegal to hold money in your hand, but if you do it with the intent to commit crime you commit a crime, if you hold the money in your hand as the result of a crime, you commit a crime.
It is not a crime to cross the street, but if you do it stepping on a person laying on the ground, the walking results in a crime.

Your arguments are continuously based on Peter´s failed interpretation of the verdict.
Peter lost because he was involved in running TBP and his claim to not to have been involved in the running was not believed by the courts.

Peter´s interpretation is false, it´s a straw-man, it´s incorrect, it has no bearing on reality and it is little more than silly.

Your point therefor ends up being even more silly.
Read the verdict, read the evidence.

“You keep defending the old guard, just like you did when defending the ridiculous copyright monopoly infringement of the pro-ACTA poster. Are you just here to contradict people?”

Rick, your claim above is even more silly.
I am merely contradicting things that are false. And your far fetched poster infringement claim is as false as it gets.

Almost everyone removes all names of ships before they sell the photograph for commercial use.
But should we believe your experience in the business of selling and buying photographs of ships is so extensive that your are in the right?
Now, please do any of the below searches, and count how many of the shots that has the name of the ship at the stern or at the bow, or anywhere else on the ship?

Oops, you will be looking at around 20 000 shots of ships, and the name has been removed from more or less all of the pictures. I wonder if they all are a part of a copyright infringement scam?

let me see if i have things right, so correct me if not. the entertainment industries didn’t like what TPB (and similar sites) were doing. they didn’t want to provide the services themselves that these ‘alternate’ sites were, wanting to keep things the way of the pre-internet days when they had total control, so decided on a cunning plan. TPB site contained links only which was not illegal so in order to get what they wanted and shut the site (and all similar sites) they made a deal with the Devil, actually the Swedish government and Law enforcement, to have raids carried out, equipment confiscated and people arrested on criminal charges, even though those actions were in fact the illegal ones. the government and law enforcement know that what they did was illegal, there is proof of that but unless the case goes to the EUCHR or EUCJ that proof will never be revealed. that is exactly why the request for the case to go that high a court will be denied. can you imagine the shit storm when it is shown what happened, how it happened, why it happened and who the instigators were? the EU is never going to allow that, not in preference to keeping 4 illegal convictions! think about the members in the EU and what they have tried to do to get ACTA into law. do you think they will go even further to stop this case going to the EU court and revealing the actions of their paymasters? of course they will! they are experts in lying and manipulation. that’s why they hold the positions they do! why, some even have extra arms, allowing more votes to be cast than voters present, like what happened with the attempt at ‘copyright reform’, so it could be defeated!

livid

July 9, 2012

These scumbags got exactly what they deserved and I hope this sets a precedence. This is neither a generational issue, nor is it an issue of technology, it is an entitlement issue. This is not sharing it is stealing. Just because the technology is there to do something does not make it legal or right. We have had guns for centuries, why is it not legal legal to shoot people? These new laws are sound and long overdue. These jerks and others like them have made themselves rich stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists by enabling millions of people to illegally download billions of dollars worth of merchandise, essentially destroying an industry and making it impossible for artists to make a living anymore. It is a myth that it is “big corporations” who were affected by this. It is actually quite the opposite. The people at the top never take the hit. The ones who suffer are the thousands of employees who all lost their jobs because of this and the artists (especially indie one’s) who now have no way to generate a realistic income. Seriously, it takes years to learn how to play an instrument, weeks to months and thousands of dollars of equipment to write, record and master proper songs, and then thousands moire to tour and support that music. So your telling me all this is not worth going to iTunes and spending one freaking DOLLAR? Sorry, no sale.

Would Sir like a nice cane which can be used for threatening gestures of disapproval at the younger half of the population?

ammo42

July 9, 2012

> This is not sharing it is stealing.

I don’t know Swedish law (and can’t read Swedish) but at least in French law stealing is defined (article 311-1 of the penal code) as « la soustraction frauduleuse de la chose d’autrui », which basically means “the withdrawal of someone else’s property by means of fraud”.
So if, for example, I download a song of Jamiroquai over P2P, it is not theft because:
-Sony doesn’t own the song, but only the monopoly granted by IP laws, which has been transferred to them by contract from Jamiroquai and the author(s) of the song.
-My downloading of the song doesn’t destroy or take out any copy of this song from anyone, so no property is withdrawed.

EsaT

July 9, 2012

Try to contradict yourself less.
By your own logic you should be screaming bloody murder and demanding Nuremberg trial for every single firearm maker for providing guns used to cause possibly hundreds of millions deaths and injuries in world’s history.

And funny thing how musicians and every kind performers managed to live when there wasn’t any technology to make records…
Maybe they actually had to keep working constantly like normal people (what small artists still have to do) instead of being paid from single work for two life times.

Steven

July 10, 2012

@livid I know a lot of people in the music industry (as well as the film and software industries) who would disagree with you. Of course, they aren’t the studio executives who are crying about how much file sharing is “hurting the artists”, they’re the ACTUAL artists who are seeing more profits now thanks to the “rampant theft” of their work than they ever would have made before.

Do you know how much money the artist makes off of a CD sale or the sale of an album on iTunes? It’s somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 cents (American) per sale if they’re lucky. On the other hand, a touring musician can make as much as 50% of ticket sales. Should they be upset that they’re losing a few cents in album sales but gaining thousands of dollars in ticket sales? Of course they shouldn’t, and (unless we’re talking about multi-million dollar acts who have lost touch with where they came from… like Metallica, who wouldn’t exist as a band if it weren’t for tape trading in the 80s) most of them aren’t.

Anonymous

July 17, 2012

Are you kidding me man? Do you know how these “indie artists” even reach an audience in the first place and get big? Free sharing online!! If there was no way to “generate a realistic income” then there would have NO new bands during the entire period that p2p file sharing existed. Which just is not the case.

Anonymous

July 17, 2012

A lot of employees lost they’re jobs when the automobile was invented too, doesn’t mean it was wrong. That’s what we as the human race do, adapt.

@DonationDude

July 10, 2012

If it is all about money
And we can not change the verdict

Why don’t we donate the millions of dollars
and let the pirates figure out new ways to change the world

[…] to face his conviction, which seems to have been pressured through and not have a solid basis. Peter Sundes appeal is available translated to English and worth reading for everybody with interest in this case or his side of the […]

[…] I got over half a million readers on it! This is amazing considering it was in Swedish. Rickard Falkvinge later translated it to English (I didn’t feel I wanted to spend energy on that, it was kind of super long!) and the news […]

[…] Send Flowers To The European Parliament For Rejecting ACTA!101ActivismActivism Aftermath of The Pirate Bay Trial: Peter Sunde’s Plea – In His Own Words91CorruptionCorruption European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter […]

“Sten” is clearly some dodgy “PR guy” or why else would he bother keep posting here? At the end of the day it’s about the music industry protecting what has been a very lucrative business model that is unfortunately (for them) being made obsolete by technology. After all, an artist can reach an audience of millions and distribute (through downloading) instantaneously and for virtually nothing. So I have a choice between giving a corporation 90 cents on the Dollar for my music to target the audience they want or paying, say, 2 cents to a sharing site with total artistic freedom. No wonder Warner, Sony, EMI and co are greasing palms and generating propaganda to make us believe they are defending anything other than their very cushy number!

[…] few weeks ago, Rick Falkvinger, founder of the original Pirate Party in Sweden posted a translation in English and it’s worth reading. By appealing for clemency and fighting the case through in this manner, […]

Blue Sky

July 14, 2012

Grammar mistake:

“These people in the Swedish judicial system have been wielding the power that the public has entrusted in them, and them have done it in a manner that I hope they feel shame for the rest of their lives.”

[…] his plea [SE] a few weeks ago, Rick Falkvinger, founder of the original Pirate Party in Sweden posted a translation in English and it’s worth reading. By appealing for clemency and fighting the case through in this manner, […]

Tj

July 15, 2012

Hi,
I have just read a lot of what is above there and there are a lot of very good points made but the one main point that is relivant in most nationalities represented here the people who have been paid off and are in charge are the people who make the rules, I’m from Ireland and our main internet provider is not allowed to grant access to TPB due to a High Court action taken against them in 2009 by the big lables in music and movie ditribution….. all other internet providers still allow access which proved the court action pointless….. we have had our fair share of corrupt politions in this country and even when found gulty they still sit very comfortable with big fat taxpayers pensions… so we do understand the shame that the normal sweed feels as this scandles circulates the globe…. I don’t know anything about the Sweedish legal system but at least here that case is clear as day a misstrial due to the fact that the investigating officer had a conflict of interest as did many others… I know that I am just having a good old pointless rant and it will probably be read by a handfull of people as I didn’t even get to read all of the above but after reading the appeal i think i just needed to vent a little at the pure disbelief of the events surrounding the case and the complete lack of common sense.. I am military and I have served alongside Sweeds with the UN and I never found them to be stupid or lacking any common sense quite the opposite I found them to be very proffessional and as we would say “switched on” ..I must stop now and I really hope that the powers that be in Sweeden realise how big a mess this is and step in and do the right thing!

Xevas

July 15, 2012

This is fucking stupid! I thought it was weird that that Assange guy wanted to go to London and now I see why! Being a teen, freedom means everything it is going to be stripped from us soon. Fuck you Sweden, I am not visiting YOUR country ever.

David D

July 15, 2012

This behaviour is completely unacceptable. I believe that if protests grow internationally, it will have a major impact on the case. It is absolutely necessary for everyone to boycot the corporations that have supported and caused the outcome of this ridiculous trial if it can even be called that. I have seen more justice in kindergarden sand boxes. If many millions of people decided that they would boycot anything associated with Warner Brothers then that would show exactly how much these corporations can Fuck with the legal systems that our hard-earned democracies have put in place, that are the right of every human being on this earth. I don’t know about everyone else, but I fully intend to avoid anything produced by Warner Bros, and if the US is threatening to cut off trade with Sweden, imagine if 1/2 the world’s population simply decided that until the Swedish government revokes Peter Sunde’s conviction and compensates him the amount that he is presently being forced to pay which is economic exile, we would not buy anything imported from Sweden. Lets see just how much the Swedish economy can take. A guaranteed destruction from lack of trade with the people that buy their products, or American governments threats to cut off trade? Lets see what the American government has to say in 5 years when their debt bankrupts the entire nation, and China or India take their place as the major world power.

Swedish government, I just have this to say to you. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. We will fuck you over. Make the right choice for everyone.

EC

July 15, 2012

Hello,

I was reading this plea and for most disturbing in which the way it was handle. If Peter actually committed a crime then he needs subjected to the laws of his government, not that of the USA. I know from being an American that piracy is illegal, Yes? But He (Peter) is not an American, so our laws should not be admissible in court, for him Sweden. Meaning that the USA holds no grounds by which it should tell another country, what it should and should not do.

Though I am believe in Jesus Christ, and believe in freedom of speech, of life and liberty. And being of my personal opinion/belief that piracy(stealing) is wrong . I think that Peter’s case should be looked again because of the way in it was handle. Don’t think I contradicted myself by say his case needs another look or my cause of my beliefs. If he did something wrong he should be prosecuted if not then drop the charges. But I think that if gets charged for a real crime it should be lessened because of the way it was handle by the corruption of police and WB pressure, and also for interference from USA on telling Sweden and things should be down our way or it will mean disaster.

Steven

July 15, 2012

This stuff is sick, pure greed ruining innocent people’s lives. Got to love the United States though, no country is as proud of their democracy then the US and no country is as controlled by almost Monarchy styled Corporate influence. The bottom line is, people’s rights will always be second to financial gain, and to those who consider piracy stealing I ask the question what is the victim losing? their “right” to profits? when considering Movies, Music and games when did it become acceptable that entertainment should only be available to those who can afford it? People who pirate these things most likely wouldn’t have purchased the item due to the motive that drove them to look for a piratable copy of the item in the first place, they can’t afford it. Theft requires someone actually losing something and piracy doesn’t fit that bill. Yes certain individuals and companies in the entertainment business are making less now with piracy, but instead of changing what a majority of people want (TPB) why not change the mind set of the minority (Entertainment Corps.) to one of settling for less, but instead we get this fanatical death grip from companies and governments towards profit. Sorry about my poor grammar

Really Sweden ?
I mean I know your population exists of a large amount of extremist groups and the local ideology is mostly right, but really…… Nazi’s are long gone and it’s no longer needed to kiss a fascist’ goverments ass, so please stay Sweden and stop being an American puppet.
Stand for what is right, not bent over to the dictatorship of others.

And if you must, stop being a bunch of Nazi’s and and destroying the free rights people died for in the past 100 years.

While I do hope that Sunde and his co-defendants get released and don’t suffer the ridiculous financial penalty (how does such a penalty even carry interest, especially while the accused serves time?), like others have mentioned, there are some confusing items in this plea… well, apart from the horrible fact that judges and cops have historically been known to being vulnerable to bribes and biases.

One of the points is that Peter Sunde identifies himself as merely a spokesperson for TPB and most of what I can find on the web indicates that he’s a co-founder of The Pirate Bay. While I still have no trouble with that, and still hope that this entire verdict gets resolved, if it’s true that Sunde helped found TPB, then it does carry some considerable weight. I don’t know the ins and outs of the Swedish judicial system, but it sounds like he would have also been tried for being part of a conspiracy to allow 3rd parties to acquire copyrighted material. But again, I don’t know the facts and even use TPB from time to time.

The great thing about TPB is that it facilitates the exchange of files and information. The problem is mostly from us that use it in order to exchange licensed material. Just as the record and movie industries are directly responsible for these individuals serving time, we are indirectly responsible for having taken part in all this. The least we can do is also approach the Swedish government, as well as our own, and get them to understand that we shall not be deterred and that they cannot blindly cater to lobbyists without suffering backlash from those who put them in office.

I’d just like to know if the police found incriminating evidence in the confiscated cables.

Zimba

July 16, 2012

Hard to understand how in a country like Sweden the system goes such far into the grey shadow. The Internet laws on copyright are based on old principles of copyright/patent laws before www appears. That’s why in Sweden but NOT only, is easy to take actions against file sharing system, despite of cultural, communities liberty of communication, private life, co-ownership rules and principles. Upon me is Old Corporatism (Analogic) against New Freedom (Digital). There are casualties on the road, and Peter is one victim. But also I see the frustration pressure added by such corporatism behavior: killing a form of liberty as Internet is, from the altitude of corner offices will be now or in days to come, piece of the social movement for change..and that may be civilized or …not. Not everything is a commodity, not everything is for sale.

Anon

July 16, 2012

Reading this, makes me truly ashamed of being an American, and the even sadder truth is that anyone who speaks out is labeled and ostracized by the very same people you are advocating for. Its shit like this that I’ve been lost faith in the human race and I am fully believe we will destroy ourselves in my lifetime, or shortly thereafter.

I used to read cyberpunk sci-fi where corporations were the government and ruled the planet with an iron-fist, but each passing day it seems to look less like fiction and more like reality.

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 16, 2012

death to capitalists, politicians and bankers!!!!! you are the disease that’s contaminating our beautifull planet… one day the whole world will blow up because of you and i will laugh at you and your copyright capitalaws in the end because they will not save you from the people’s wrath you fucks!!! i hope you die ‘cuz you are killing the planet and the human race. This is also people’s fault because 50% or more of the entire world’s population are dumbs as a tree trunk and they exploit your ignorance and you fall for it like sheeps following the flock. you retarded fucks, comsumist whores, go listen to Lady GAGA and put a buckshot between your brains ‘cuz your just like the zombies in walking dead! ur already dead you just don’t know it yet, dumb fucks. this one if for you, that’s basically what this whole corrupt system tells you to do and you comply like dumb sheeps: GO TO WORK, SEND YOUR KIDS TO SCHOOL, FOLLOW FASHION, ACT NORMAL, WALK ON THE PAVEMENT, WATCH T.V., SAVE FOR YOUR OLD AGE, REPEAT AFTER ME: I AM FREE…. and you say in the end: yes my shepherd. mehhhh…… it’s time to fuck these fuckers, enough talk! death to this corrupt system and death to ignorance in humanity!

Peace lover

July 17, 2012

I hope you become a super vigilante with the super powers of all super heroes and send these fuckers to their grave.

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 17, 2012

maybe someday i will…

WHERES THE DDOS?

July 17, 2012

Where is the group “Anonymous” and their DDOS skills? DDOS the SHIT out of all swedish government websites and Warner bros sites in USA!!!! FUCK THEM ALL FOR THIS BULLSHIT THEY HAVE DONE!!

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 17, 2012

some of the “Anonymous” member were caught by authorities so i don’t know exactly how’s the movement going these days….

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 17, 2012

you disgust me, you insult the entire human race with your dumbness, you are just products of this system, dumb zombie sheep, this is also because of you for supporting corruption with your dumbness. that’s the worst part of this entire crap we’re living in

An American Serf

July 17, 2012

Only good thing I can see from this, is we americans arent alone.
The ‘democratic’ system is enharently flawed, and unfortunaly there isnt a thing we serf’s can do about it. Follow the logic here.

1Poltician is a Job, in order to get the Job, you need to get money from somwhere.
2You get money from thoes who have it (Media groups, special interest groups)
3All of this is to ‘put on a show for the subnambulent public’ while you negiotate with thoes in real power.
4We dont vote on our leader (president) there voted it by ‘electorial colledge’ who is put into place by state or local goverments, who are doing a job, see first point. Other leaders see point one.
5All of our media is controled by 6 of ‘thoes’ major companies envolved in this mess, its fact.
The goverment, who is bought and paid for by 2, have all the weapons, we are slowly getting rid of ours through various means.
Any public protests, dont work, see the point 5.
No judge who sees any political career is not going to cheeze off thoes big 6 companies, people disapeer that way, or go out in a flaming mess to prove thoes companies point. This is just another example of the coperations stuffing out any enemies it chooses to.
We know we live in a serf envorioment that we cant really do anything about it. I just wish they where at least honest about it. But watch as much as I feel for this guy, nothing will happen. It wont be covered by any major international news agencies for the subnamulent public, just few independant places and swept under the rug.
Sorry Sweeden, and the rest of the world, its only going to get worse.

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 17, 2012

of course there’s hope. hope is the last thing to die. and one of the things we have to do is stop contribuiting to this corrupt system. humanity needs to learn to live like in the old ways where we lived from the land, we planted our food and we were able to survive by ourselves but now? it seems 90% of the entire human race is like a big mechanized baby sucking money from a job like a nursing nipple and if that fails it’s death for them because those people were programed to live like that (zombie-sheeps, products of this corrupt system) and can’t do anything else about how they live their lives… imagine if every single human beeing brakes from the shackles of having to work for a fat fuck sitting upstais and thinking how he’s gonna rob all the money in the world and also paying taxes to a corrupt system for a life were he can live by his own and work for himself, imagine if this happens maybe we won’t need a violent solution to end this corrupt system because we will colapse the system if noone fills in their fat capitalist bellies. sometimes the solution is right in front of our eyes…

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 17, 2012

they can force us to do a lot of their dirty stuff but they can’t force us to work and they can’t force us to pay taxes, and if we learn to live by ourselves and tell them to fuck off that’s when they will fall…

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 17, 2012

consider what i’m saying kinda like the Boston Tea Party. I say fuck their tea! I say fuck their money and their jobs. i can live by myself and proudly so i’m a proud person out of this hell spawn capitalist system

[…] Brokep’s plea can be read in full on his own blog, translated in English (opens in new window). […]

TPB user

July 17, 2012

Is there a government in the world today that is not corrupt? Is there maybe even a chart of highest to lowest ratio of corruption?

sam strong

July 17, 2012

i know we should not have to but is there any way that we can help pay his debt i am willing to chip in money i am currently i student studying IT and don’t have that much but i use pirate bay and want to help.

[…] Aftermath of The Pirate Bay Trial: Peter Sunde’s Plea – In His Own Words – Falkvinge on Infopol… […]

wishiwascorruptasyou

July 17, 2012

Yet another example of the dangers of smoking marijuana and the love, peace and mungbean generation’s evolution into harrasment, restriction and hipocricy. Either that or the 60’s never happened.

capitalistbloodsuckers

July 20, 2012

wtf does marijuana has to do with the current state of the globe? you just showed what a fucking dumb person you are… do some research about it and don’t talk about something you absolutely don’t know shit you fucking dumb ignorant

morongtanz

July 18, 2012

BBC has a 16 July 2012 article: “Pirate Bay block effectiveness short-lived, data suggests”
(By Dave Lee) – bbc [dot] com/news/technology-18833060
“A drop in file-sharing following a court ordered block of the Pirate Bay was short-lived, data seen by the BBC suggests.
A major UK internet service provider (ISP) said peer-to-peer (P2P) activity on its network returned to just below normal only a week after the measures were enforced earlier this year.
Critics had warned the ban would prove ineffective.”

[…] in exceptional circumstances. If you have a moment, and I know this is long, please read Peter Sunde’s plea for pardon and account of the trial in his own words. I found it quite interesting that the policeman who […]

dancer42

August 3, 2012

what mmpa and the like are doing has been proved over and over to be counter productive. people who share some or all of there work have increased sails of sed work .the mmpa and people like them want completed control of their work at a high price rather the letting the market decide its value monopoly is their dis sire even at the lose of money to play fair is not in their book. too cheat bribe threaten and corrupt is the norm these people should be stopped because they surely will take any freedom away that inter-fears with any agenda they seek.

Those of the flesh attempt to control spirit by closing the door of spirit, locking it away and holding it within flesh of the senses.

No matter how they use false images to bind spirit within flesh, they will not succeed…

know that the Christ walks upon this Earth; upon this matrix, the vehicle of free speech, the internet, the light of truth will spread and herald the age of a true brotherhood of man. The truth which will spread in geometric progression, a fire that will consume all…

No dark corner exist where the light of truth will not penetrate and illuminate those concealed.

The tares have been bundled for final burning…

Not even Obama’s hand can prevent the truth by pulling the plug of free speech, he has visited the great pyramid, yet he knows not of the truth hidden within its dimensions.

History has proved, all that is false will fall, all that is true will stand…

The great pyramid is built upon the foundation of light, its structure rests upon its base, its base expresses the speed of light, as time is expressed by the circumference of two circles, so when one of the two circles (the lesser) is deducted from the other (the greater) the speed of light is known…

Time is measured by two orbits, the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and the moons orbit around the Earth; all else is but the play of light and shadow upon the Earths surface…

In the illumination of this truth, those that conceal the true light of man to worship false idols will have no hiding place.

[…] managed by Avaaz, 113,338 people signed the demand to grant Peter Sunde pardon, after reading his hair-raising story of corruption and a national system defending itself against at any price against upstart […]

[…] managed by Avaaz, 113,338 people signed the demand to grant Peter Sunde pardon, after reading his hair-raising story of corruption and a national system defending itself against at any price against upstart […]

[…] managed by Avaaz, 113,338 people signed the demand to grant Peter Sunde pardon, after reading his hair-raising story of corruption and a national system defending itself against at any price against upstart […]

Artists unable to survive on the income generated by it? Doesn’t sound so bad to me. I quite enjoy when the art I’m attempting to appreciate hasn’t been dilluted (polluted) by beancounting market researchers. Many of my favorite artists made little to no money from their work (whilst alive). The problem is not many poeple want to be artists, they want to be stars. Not actors, filmakers, poets, writers, musicians, painters etc but filthy rich Idols. When art is born from passion instead of greed, when the bulb flashes overhead instead of beady eyes, licking lips and wringing hands maybe It’ll be worth something to someone, maybe even money.
If the entertainment mega corp’s spent half the time and resources they currently spend hunting digital robbin hoods on supporting/ nurturing their artists and finding better ways to reward their paying customers instead of punnishing them in case they’re pirates, (gyarr! anti-piracy measures usually hurt the paying customer, not the pirate) then piracy (of the copyright infringing variety) would decrease.
Give your customers something worth paying for and they will, leave some money in their pockets and they can, reward them when they do and they’ll come back with friends but continue to accuse, alienate and insult them whilst bleeding them dry on top of incarcerating their Robbin Hoods’ and some day soon you’ll find there are 6 billion of us vs 6 thousand of you.
If that fails you could always use your considerable wealth and power to, i don’t know, provide things that don’t get downloaded as much, like food, healthcare, childcare, housing, education (and no, McDonalds, majority of pharmecuticles, video games, non bio-degradable packaging, advertising or the failing cloning facilities called schools don’t count).
The fact that less than 5% of the earths popullation is in agressive posession of about 95% of the wealth won’t go unnoticed forever especially if you fuck with the supply of entertainment. What happens when the skyflowers no longer distract the zombies again?

[…] Mr. Sunde’s plea was published by the website of Rick Falkvinge, founder of Sweden’s “Pirate Party”, formed in 2006. The Piratpartiet grew rapidly in the wake of widespread national outrage in Sweden over the Swedish Government’s outright prostitution of their own national sovereignty in the face of US Government threats in this case. You can read the original article from Mr. Falkvinge’s website here. […]

[…] Also from the perspective of those in power there is a perceived threat to the commercial heart of the corporate enterprises they manage. WikiLeaks has represented a danger of destabilizing the “normal” flow of profit and revenues of such corporations – and that has to be stopped. After all, what are governments for in capitalist societies if not to protect primarily the economic interests of the class they represent? It is a demonstrated fact that the US government has used diplomatic resources – including threats – to protect commercial interests of corporate holdings. That was the case with the direct intervention of the US – through assignments to the Swedish Ministry of Justice – during the Swedish file-sharing events which ended with the Pirate Bay trial put forward by the Swedish Prosecutor Authority – after the US requests. […]

[…] the investigation and while still on notice with the Police, and was already hired by Warner when conducting the hearings and wrapping up the investigation. This is a textbook bribe, which is why you will find many […]

30% economic sanctions upon Sweden were threatened if this was not passed

Now, Sweden will be changing its own grundlag in order to accommodate USA.

Shhhhhhh. It will slip through Riksdag in the middle of the night, and not a single note of protest shall be heard.

It will cost billions of SEK to implement it. Billions from the Swedish banking system paid to PWC, KPMG, Deloitte. All so that the Swedish govt and Swedish banks shall be arms of the USA IRS and to tax and penalize Swedish citizens living in Sweden.

But Sweden will sleep through it. The only European politician who has said anything is Sophie Int Veld, but she has now been silenced also.

Dear Sweden: Welcome to America–you have been annexed and you shall pay your penance to USA.

[…] from prison this month. Falkvinge told me Sunde’s role in The Pirate Bay was very minor, in a length​y statement written for Falkvinge’s blog published after his plea, he states his conviction came about after “having sent an invoice […]

[…] prison this month. Falkvinge told me Sunde’s role in the Pirate Bay was very minor, in a length​y statement written for Falkvinge’s blog published after his plea, he states his conviction came about after “having sent an invoice […]

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